California 'fire tornado' forced residents to flee in chaos

REDDING, California - The "fire tornado" that ripped through Northern California last week forced residents to flee their homes chaotically, many with their pets and little else, people sheltering in Red Cross evacuation centers said.

The blaze, the seventh most destructive in California history, roared suddenly into Redding and adjacent communities after being whipped by gale-force winds into a fire storm that jumped the Sacramento River.

The erratic blaze forced 38,000 people from their homes. Most of them are staying at hotels or with friends and relatives. But nearly 300 are at Red Cross shelters in the Redding area, including retired firefighter Steven Bailey.

Bailey and others at the shelter said the fire's towering inferno bewildered them.

"It's tough being on the other side. Being on the engine and going in, that was tough but it was a different type of tough when you get told to leave and you don't know anything, yeah, so it's different. I don't wish anyone to have to experience (it)."

Rob McDonald said he left his home in Shasta County hoping the fire would not make it up the hill where he lives, taking only a few personal items with him.

"Wish I would have grabbed a few other things. I was thinking it wasn't going to get up there, it was a just 'in-case' thing. And it did. And so I'm in limbo, total limbo as to what's going on up there," McDonald said.

As the fire approached, people grabbed what they could. For many, that included their furry friends.

Volunteers set up a special hall at the Shasta College evacuation center to cater for people with pets, not only dogs and cats but also rats, pot-bellied pigs and a giant tortoise.

Frank Williams, who managed to bring his dogs but had to leave his pet birds behind, was emotional when recalling how noisy the animals were when they arrived last Friday.

"I can tell you about how quiet it was last night, after the animals being stressed from when we got in here on Friday. You could have heard a pin drop, finally, last night because all the animals were dead tired from barking," Williams said.

Wildfire evacuations have become a fact of life in California, which is bearing the brunt of an extreme run of wildfires across the U.S. West.

At least 10,000 people have been dislodged in Mendocino County in California's wine country from two wildfires. Hundreds were evacuated from the Cranston Fire in Riverside County east of Los Angeles last week.

Erratic winds and record high temperatures have fueled blazes that blackened nearly 410,000 acres in California, the state's highest year-to-date level in a decade.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Seven hospitalized in California white supremacist rally

CALIFORNIA - At least seven people were injured at a rally outside the California state capitol in Sacramento on Sunday as members of a white supremacist group clashed with counter-protesters, authorities said.

The melee erupted during a rally staged by the Traditionalist Worker Party, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist extremist group.

One of its leaders, Matt Parrott, said the party had called the demonstration in part to protest against violence that has broken out outside recent rallies by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The incident may fuel concerns about the potential for violent protests outside the major party conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia this summer and in the run-up to the Nov. 8 presidential election.

When the white supremacists arrived at the capitol building at about noon on Sunday, "counter-protesters immediately ran in - hundreds of people - and they engaged in a fight," said George Granada, a spokesman for the Capitol Protection Service division of the California Highway Patrol.

In announcing the counter-protest, a group called Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento said on its website that it had a "moral duty" to deny a platform for "Nazis from all over the West Coast" to voice their views.

"We have a right to self defense. That is why we have to shut them down," Yvette Felarca, a counter-protester wearing a white bandage on her head, told reporters after the clash.

At least some of the injuries at the rally involved stab wounds, according to local media. None of them were life-threatening and there were no immediate reports of arrests, Granada said. The building was placed on lockdown.

Matthew Heimbach, chairman of Traditionalist Worker Party, said his group had expected violence even though it planned a peaceful rally and had a permit.

"We were there to support nationalism. We are white nationalists," Heimbach told Reuters. "We were there to take a stand."

Representatives of the Sacramento police could not be reached immediately for further comment.

Video footage on social media showed dozens of people, some of them wearing masks and wielding what appeared to be wooden bats, racing across the capitol grounds and attacking others.

Photos on social media showed emergency officials treating a victim on the grass in the area as police officers stood guard.

The melee comes about four months after four people were stabbed during a scuffle between members of the Ku Klux Klan and counter-protesters near a KKK rally in Anaheim, California.

In recent months Trump has blamed "professional agitators" and "thugs" for violence that has broken out at many of the Republican candidate's rallies.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, last month, anti-Trump protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers who responded with pepper spray. A month earlier, some 20 demonstrators were arrested outside a Trump rally in Costa Mesa, California.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com